House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., at podium, speaks in front of members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus during a visit to the border Monday, June 18, 2018, in San Diego. The members of congress spoke about their visit to area immigration detention facilities. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

Fourteen Democratic members of Congress — 10 from Southern California — said Monday they saw firsthand how the Trump administration’s policy separating migrant children from their parents was playing out in San Diego detention facilities.

“They’re ripped from the arms of their parents. The parents don’t even know how long they’ll be separated, whether it could be a week or months,” Monterey Park U.S. Rep. Judy Chu, Chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, said at a Monday news conference, describing what she’d learned during a visit to several border-adjacent facilities taken by herself and other members of Congress.

Chu said she and others were there to investigate what she termed “the cruelest act” currently being undertaken by the federal government.

Members of the Democratic congressional delegation, led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, said the trip was planned two weeks ago when reports emerged that Department of Homeland Security was enacting an official policy to split up families who were trying to enter the U.S. illegally, detaining children and parents in separate locations. But most of those reports came from the Texas-Mexico border, leaving California’s congressional leaders uncertain about whether and how that practice was being employed in their state.

On Monday, after being criticized by Democrats and some members of the GOP, the Trump administration doubled down on the policy, saying family separation is a strategic deterrent aimed at stopping illegal immigration.

As that played out in national media, the all-Democratic delegation at the border spent the day at a shelter for migrant children, a detention center holding parents, a border patrol station and the Port of Entry at San Ysidro, the busiest land border crossing in the Western hemisphere.

Among other things, members of Congress said they saw children as young as 6 who were held apart from their parents.

“One clinician, in particular, told us about the traumas that all these kids suffer,” said Rep. Juan Vargas, whose district straddles Imperial and San Diego counties and who organized Monday’s excursion.

“Huge trauma. Can you imagine? Being ripped away from their mom or their dad?”

Los Angeles Congresswoman Nanette Barragán, whose office is trying to help three mothers who had been separated from their kids, recalled talking to one woman who had spoken to her son only once in the past 30 days. She said immigration officials had relocated the boy to New York.

“That’s injustice,” Barragán said.

Orange County Rep. Lou Correa, who sits on the House Committee on Homeland Security, said it was important for the representatives to see the situation firsthand because the Trump administration has provided misinformation about the policy and changed its story on how it treats migrant families. As an example, he noted that Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen on Sunday tweeted that the administration “did not have” a policy of separating families at the border, only to reverse course on Monday to defend the practice and blame Democrats for its implementation.

Correa called the temporary detention cells at the Port of Entry “overcrowded and nasty, with people sleeping almost on top of each other.” San Ysidro Port of Entry officials did not immediately return calls for comment.

Correa also recalled a conversation with a counselor who worked with detained migrant children, who explained why many of the kids had made the journey to America.

“When these kids are growing up in Central America, they’re given a choice: get a certain age, you either join or a gang — MS13, which the President talks about — or you die,” Correa said. “They picked a third (choice), which is going out in search of possibly a survival alternative. So given that situation, how is (Trump’s policy) going to be a deterrent?”

Ontario Congresswoman Norma Torres joined the rest of the delegation in calling on President Donald Trump to rescind the separation policy.

“Former First Lady Laura Bush came out and said this is is immoral,” Torres said. “First Lady Melania Trump is saying the same thing.”

Jordan Graham covers congressional politics and county government for the Orange County Register. He began his career reporting freelance civic and watchdog journalism in his hometown of Chicago before moving westward in 2013. He has previously covered Irvine, the San Fernando Valley and Costa Mesa for the Register. He is a graduate of University of Illinois and Northwestern University. Please email or call him with news tips.